Forest Hills Gardens, Greenway Terrace entrance and bridge, July 24, 1927.

Forest Hills Gardens was designed as a planned community for New Yorkers of all social classes — a sort of American response to the English garden communities — but developed into a wealthy enclave, due to the high cost of construction and the use of restrictive covenants that, while they did not explicitly prohibit minority ownership, discouraged working class and minority residents in practice.

Architect Grosvenor Atterbury’s neo-Tudor, neo-Georgian, and Arts and Crafts designs are protected by a strict design covenant adopted by the governing Forest Hills Gardens Corporation in 1922, which preserves the development’s distinctive architectural character.